Taking Conservation to New Heights: Bolivian Subnational Protected Areas and Sustainable Nature Finance

By: Peter Oesterling 

Over the last several months, the Andes Amazon Fund (AAF) has supported some great successes in Bolivia for the creation of subnational protected areas – from the establishment of historically large municipal protected areas for the Department of Pando in Gran Manupare and Bosque Escondido de Ingavi, to the crucial expansion of the San Rafael Municipal Protected Area in the Chiquitania in an area under immense pressure from wildfires, to the establishment of Yande Yarɨ by the Indigenous government of Charagua Iyambae protecting a portion of Bolivia’s Chaco forests, among other notable results. However, with all this new legal protection comes the challenge of ensuring these areas are set up for long-term success with sustainable funding streams for their management.

Late last year I made some field visits to see some of these achievements in Bolivia firsthand with AAF partner Protección del Medio Ambiente Tarija (PROMETA). In the Department of Potosí, we visited the Cordillera Crucero – La Tranca Municipal Protected Area in the rural municipality of Cotagaita. Cordillera Crucero is a unique protected area in the Bolivian Altiplano because along with the adjacent Cordillera de los Chichas – Mochará Municipal Protected Area (of the Tupiza Municipality), it contains some of the last remaining populations of the Andean Guanaco (Lama guanicoe) in Bolivia. The landscape of Cordillera Crucero includes an interesting mixture of rolling mountains, desert, and broad forest oases amid the vast altiplano. As of April 2025, the Cordillera Crucero — La Tranca Municipal Protected Area spans 102,196 acres (41,539 hectares) thanks to a recent expansion.

Despite the arid and unforgiving environment, Cordillera Crucero contains perhaps one of the largest continuous Polylepis forests in South America. Polyepsis trees, the highest altitude flowering trees, provide habitat to birds and other native wildlife and absorb mist from the clouds to bring much-needed water to the ground.

“AAF has supported the initial management of Cordillera Crucero including hiring park staff, forming the management committee, developing the management plan, and supporting sustainable livestock practices that are compatible with the protected area as well as economic alternatives such as beekeeping.”

– Peter Oesterling, Program Officer, Andes amazon fund

Meanwhile along with the Guanacos, Andean Condors (Vultur gryphus) are regularly seen soaring high above the mountains of the protected area, which averages over 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) in altitude. In sum, it’s a spectacular place in an often-overlooked region of the Andes, playing a crucial role in conservation for not just local communities but for Bolivia in general. In 2022, the Ministry of Environment and Water declared the conservation of the Andean Guanaco a national priority as a result of the hard work of PROMETA, local communities, and the municipalities of Cotagaita and Tupiza.

During my visit, the PROMETA team and I stopped at the La Tranca community located at the heart of the protected area. From there we set out to trek around the nearby mountains to observe Cordillera Crucero’s landscape and search for the Andean Guanacos it protects. After hiking for several hours with the protected area’s park guard and members of the La Tranca community, we encountered several Guanacos, a camelid and important prey of Pumas (Puma concolor concolor) that makes this area emblematic for the Bolivian Altiplano.

To wrap up our excursion on the hike back to La Tranca, we passed through the PA’s extensive Polylepis forest, which seemingly was never ending. Seeing a Polyepsis forest that large in this type of ecosystem was notable as I have more experience seeing relict Polylepis forests in places like the high Peruvian Andes that are a fraction of the size but also in much wetter environments.

When passing through Cordillera Crucero, a subtle detail that isn’t immediately noticed as the visitor is enjoying the landscape is that the ecosystem is surprisingly pristine. There is no trash to be found anywhere and the livestock which form a part of the local income is strictly controlled by the community members – eliminating adverse impacts to the local ecology. Such details are examples of the high degree of local support for the protected area and the benefits it provides the surrounding population. AAF has supported the initial management of this area including hiring park staff, forming the management committee, developing the management plan, and supporting sustainable livestock practices that are compatible with the protected area as well as economic alternatives such as beekeeping.

However, the protected area is at a flexion point given that AAF’s financial support for the area’s management is limited to the initial years after its creation. It will be up to the local municipality and allied organizations to take the baton to ensure there are sufficient financial resources to keep building upon the great progress that’s been made and to continue to keep this place protected from outside threats such as mining interests that abound in the Bolivian Altiplano. Bolivian municipalities can do a lot with very little local revenue to try to keep their protected areas afloat, although much more needs to be done to support the effective management of subnational protected areas like Cordillera Crucero – La Tranca in Bolivia considering that they do so much more than conserving the commons for local people, and local municipal budgets are limited. What can be done to bridge the funding gap?

I recently participated in a workshop in Santa Cruz, Bolivia that covered several potential high-level avenues for helping fund this important work, which was organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program (ASL) of the World Bank. The workshop convened country delegations from across South America composed of government representatives and conservation trust funds as well as members of international financial institutions such as the World Bank, Interamerican Development Bank, BioFin, World Economic Forum, and Nature Finance, among others.

“The challenge now more than ever is to determine what steps are necessary to connect rural municipalities like Cotagaita in Potosí that have treasures like Cordillera Crucero – La Tranca with the appropriate institutional framework to access those resources…”

Peter Oesterling, Program Officer, Andes Amazon fund

The workshop covered a wide variety of financial mechanisms such as debt for nature conversions, local capital market funds, green bonds, carbon and biodiversity credits, project finance for permanence agreements, as well as other innovative mechanisms, which all have amazing potential to help collectively address the annual gap in funding to save the planet’s biodiversity (approximately $700 billion). The overall objective of the workshop was to expose the country delegations to all these different avenues available to sustainably finance the conservation of nature in their respective countries along with exchanging their lessons learned so far, which was a tremendous step forward in addressing the urgency of the moment countries like Bolivia are in along with others across the continent in terms of biodiversity loss and deforestation. 

With all these funding mechanisms and surely several others out there, the challenge now more than ever is to determine what steps are necessary to connect rural municipalities like Cotagaita in Potosí that have treasures like Cordillera Crucero – La Tranca with the appropriate institutional frameworks to access those resources, and if those don’t exist yet, determine what must be done to build the needed capacity and connections considering the contribution such subnational protected areas make to objectives far beyond their jurisdiction. Counting subnational protected areas, Bolivia has already fulfilled its 30 by 30 goals within Target 3 of the Kunming – Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in terms of protecting at least 30% of its terrestrial area. However, fulfilling the other principal component of that target which is effectively managing all that surface area remains.